Con Ed’s claim
To The Editor:
While crediting Con Edison for going to Capitol Hill and successfully lobbying for federal 9/11 reconstructions, last week’s Downtown Express editorial had some glaring inaccuracies about the $174 million still owed to our ratepayers. The Express erroneously equates the “relocation work” – the moving of existing electric, gas, and steam infrastructure to accommodate government projects – as “normal” work we “would still be performing.”
Contrary to your point: if the city’s projects hadn’t been undertaken to rebuild and revitalized Lower Manhattan, then Con Edison’s work would not have been necessary either. If the city received 9/11 money for its projects, why shouldn’t utility ratepayers be reimbursed as well? After all, this work is all related to rebuilding Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of the attacks.
Let’s make sure that utility customers are reimbursed the money they are owed before planning to spend on other projects.
John Banks
Vice President
Government Relations
Con Edison
No hiking alone
To the Editor:
I was in my late twenties when what I write about here occurred.
One beautiful June morning, four of us (two men and two women) took a hike up Mount Washington in New Hampshire; three of us were veteran mountain-hikers, the fourth a much less experienced hiker. We went up one side of Tuckerman Ravine and walked carefully across it while glancing at the scenery all around us when we were at a great height. Although we had heard that the ravine was treacherous, we seemed to manage very well, except for our less experienced young woman. Seventy years later she confessed to me how frightened she really was.
After coming down from the ravine, we rested for a day and then decided to go onto a nearby snow-covered mountain in the same range. All four of us moved ahead on that new mountain more easily, expecting no trouble. As the two men were walking in the snow below where my frightened friend and I were situated, suddenly my foot slipped on some ice and I slid down the mountain. Fortunately the men below caught me before I zoomed into the snow-laden forest below where I would have been lost forever or been found a millennium later by mountain dwellers of the future.
Fifty years later, narrating this adventure to some travelers on a train through Switzerland, I learned from them — as they were mountain climbers — that they had heard of treacherous Mt. Washington’s ravine and that several years earlier Tuckerman Ravine was closed down because of so many fatalities there – even rescuers were lost there.
Never go on any hiking trip alone because of the potential danger of accidents. I was experienced at hiking, and I almost lost my life on a non-treacherous section of a mountain.
Geraldine Lipschutz
Thorn in the side
To the editors:
The DeLury Park site in front of 77 Fulton Street is a thorn in the sides of some SBT residents. Everybody should know that to fix, to rebuild, or to change anything means a lot of inconvenience. Do any of the Fulton Street critics know an easy way – except to keep the status quo (i.e., leave things as they are).
The comments in the Downtown Express were far from satisfactory. In some comments it seemed the critics simply wanted to be heard. Did any of them not find the planted foliage to be something beautiful?
My mother had a saying regarding criticism of something still unfinished: “Never show a fool half-done work!”
Geraldine Lipschutz
Letters policy
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